Laptops That Were A Hit In 2014
2015 is fast approaching and you may be thinking about either upgrading your current laptop, or getting a new one entirely to deal with the pressures of the upcoming months. Christmas might be over, but the number of retail bargains is only set to grow in the next few days and weeks. Electronics are set to be reduced even further in Boxing Day and January sales so if there ever was a time to take the leap, it would be now.
But which one do you pick? Like many electronic products, the necessary information is usually lost under the barrage of seemingly random numbers and jargon. Such technical jargon is useful once you really get to grips with it but until then it can be more of a hindrance. Here however, I’ll take you through some of the best laptops available and why without reverting to topic related mumbo jumbo.
First is the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch, a stunning piece of machinery; it has one of the biggest screens on the market at 15 inches but it also boasts the highest resolution so everything still looks crisp and sharp. On smaller screens resolution is not as important, the higher the resolution means the smaller everything looks so if going for a high resolution, get a larger screen. The MacBook does not excel on every level though and it is one of the most expensive laptops available. If you don’t care about the brand name then there are some real contenders out there.
Storage is not as big an issue as it once was with the mass production of terabyte external hard drives but if you don’t want to carry about the extra weight then there are some laptops with plenty of memory in them. The largest is the Acer Aspire E1-510P-2671. Not only does it have 8GB of RAM but it has 500GB extra storage. Now this amount of RAM may be excessive unless you plan to play the latest video games (which would look great on its 15.6 inch screen) but considering it has decent specs across the board and depending on where you go, it can be acquired for £1000 cheaper than the MacBook. It deserves some serious consideration.
Whether you want to use your new laptop for general usage or you need it to become a vital tool for your work, battery life becomes a very serious factor. There is no point having a laptop that can’t last the full working day. Now the MacBook can do that for you, clocking up just below 9 hours but don’t think you can use it on the commute home. The ASUS Transformer Book T100TA on the other hand can ramp up an impressive 11 hours and 20 minutes of usage time meaning it can handle any overtime you might take on too. However, this comes at a price; the reason it lasts so long is because it doesn’t have nearly as much memory to search through. It contains only 64GB which falls pretty low in comparison to the Acer, which only manages 6 hours of battery life despite the hulking amount of storage.
Most laptops seem to flutter between these values, the MSI GS70 Stealth has a staggering 16GB RAM and an even more astonishing 1256GB hard drive with a superfast processor but cannot even last 4 hours whereas the Lenovo IdeaPad U430 touch has decent specs in terms of battery life and memory but it boasts one of the slowest processors.
All of this means that there is no laptop that can meet the highest degree in every department; they are only laptops in the end and not desktops. But out of all the laptops, one can come pretty close. I have been mentioning the MacBook Pro 15 inch as I have went along, but it is the smaller MacBook 13 inch version which I think still remains one of the best laptops available.
Despite the fact that it is about to reach its 1st birthday, the MacBook Pro has held off the competition from the 2014 generation of laptops to remain a solid overall machine. With a RAM of 4GB and a hard drive of 128GB it is fairly standard and can cope with all but the most demanding video games. For everything else, its superfast processer beats just about everything (including its 15 inch counterpart) and its high resolution works perfectly for the size of screen meaning you will get the best of both worlds. It even beats the ASUS transformer by a slim margin in terms of battery life despite having double the memory. Finally, it is priced for around £800 meaning you get a lot for your money.
So as those prices are slashed in holiday sales, do your research, make sure you know what you want the laptop for and then get it for less. But consider the MacBook Pro as it still reigns as one of the best laptops available.